


like the setting of the sun, and the trigger of a gun

by bowlingfornerds



Series: long fics [10]
Category: The 100
Genre: Alternate Universe - Criminals, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, F/M, Guns, Hate, Murderer, On the Run, Police, Road Trip, Suicide, hostage, killer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-24
Updated: 2015-07-24
Packaged: 2018-04-11 00:19:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4413611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bowlingfornerds/pseuds/bowlingfornerds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He begged for mercy."<br/>"And I showed him mercy."<br/>"You killed him!"<br/>"Quickly."</p><p>Bellamy had to get out of town and found himself driving in one direction until he could come home. He never expected a girl to climb into his car with a gun. And he never expected to live more than a day after that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	like the setting of the sun, and the trigger of a gun

**Author's Note:**

> HEY. New fic. I'm proud. I had an awesome beta reader - Rose, my love - who gave me lots of sarcastic and funny comments regarding the story instead of actually editing. So I hope you like it.
> 
> AS A TRIGGER WARNING  
> This story contains murder, robbing and suicide, as well as being shot and generally being dicks to each other. If you think you're going to be triggered by any of those things, I would say that you shouldn't read it.
> 
> Otherwise, I'm really proud of this story and I really hope you guys like it.

 Bellamy stared, dumbfounded, horror-struck, at the woman in front of him. The murderer in front of him. He shouldn’t have been surprised. She had gotten into his truck the day before with a gun, telling him to drive. She had looked serious and blood-thirsty, and he knew she’d pull the trigger. And now, there she was, blood splattered up her pale skin; ghost-like and with dots of red.

“He begged for mercy,” Bellamy said quietly, staring at the body on the ground. He was slumped over, a pool of blood forming from the side of his head onto the linoleum floor of the petrol station. Griffin looked up at him, a steady gaze, unwavering.

“And I showed him mercy,” she replied.

“You killed him!”

“Quickly.” She turned after that, letting Bellamy watch, jaw dropped at the woman in front of him. She ducked behind the counter, shoving the gun into the back of her shorts, and the money from the till into her backpack. As she left, she gestured with her head for him to follow.

He had no choice. She had the gun. And he didn’t want her taking his truck, if she went for that instead of his life.

\--

An old AC/DC album blared from his speakers. He didn’t know all of the words, but he didn’t care. The motorway was practically empty, and he pressed his foot down that much harder, taking advantage of the open road. Bellamy drummed on the wheel, barely in time but not caring. He sung out the words he knew, and stayed silent when he didn’t.

Heat bared down on the truck, and his windows were wide open. The air conditioner had been broken for months, and Bellamy had no aim to fix it. Not anymore. He could have stolen a car – he knew that. But he didn’t want to. He wasn’t a criminal, not really. But Octavia had stared at him, tears in her eyes, and told him to get out of town.

He was never one to deny his little sister’s wishes.

Bellamy had been driving for three days in one direction. He had no clue as to where he was, or what landmarks he’d been passing, but he didn’t care. He was following his sister’s wishes. Get out of here, she’d told him. The look he received from his sister’s boyfriend was both sympathy and anger, balled up into one. He didn’t want to test his limits and find out which was more prominent.

So he drove on.

Eventually, like he expected, he hit the traffic; rows of cars going as far as he could see, bumper to bumper. Each had their windows down and now Bellamy’s music was swirling into the air with everyone else’s. He couldn’t drum along anymore. He didn’t know which song he was listening to.

He was stuck in the traffic jam for a good forty five minutes, but Bellamy couldn’t care less. He had nowhere to be – no destination worth reaching, or goal aiming to complete. No, he was drifting. He would make it through the traffic eventually.

It was when he reached the accident; the four police cars, two emergency traffic lights, and three quarters of the road blocked off, that the passenger side door opened. His backpack was shoved onto the ground and the stranger jumped in, hair like the sun and eyes like the ocean. He stared in shock.

“What the fuck?” He asked, eyes wide, glancing from the girl to the police cars. He could tell the police, right? He didn’t know what this was, but it felt illegal.

The girl had scratches, cuts and bruises down her hair line and the right side of her face. Her arms were covered in welts; purples and greens running into each other, smudged with the red of her blood. In her hand, she held a gun.

“I wouldn’t tell the police,” was all she said. “Just drive.” Bellamy swallowed, his eyes wide and scared. As he passed the accident, he only stared at the police, hoping they would look to him and see his need. Bellamy rarely felt scared – he was six foot, and generally quite intimidating. But nothing like this. Nothing like a gun, with the safety turned off and a girl who looked as if she had nothing to lose. He drove for a while, swerving between cars and unsure what was happening.

After a while, the girl shrugged her backpack off her back and dumped it with his own bag in the footwell. She kept the gun on her lap, pointing forwards, towards the engine, and her eyes directed at the road.

Was he a hostage? Or just held captive? Bellamy wasn’t sure, but the term wasn’t what was bugging him. He didn’t know what he was doing. Eventually, though, the girl spoke.

“Where are you headed?” She asked. Bellamy took a few seconds to reply, surprised to hear anything other than the sound of his music, which the girl had turned down, but still kept quite loud. He glanced at her, before shrugging.

“I didn’t have a destination in mind,” he replied. She nodded.

“Driving for the sake of driving?” He just shrugged again.

“Driving to get away.” They were quiet again after that, and Bellamy kept going until he was running low on petrol, and needed to fill up. He was running out of money, too. The girl remained silent as he parked, and he pulled the key out of the ignition, unsure if she would try to steal his truck. She watched, amused.

When he filled up the truck, she stood outside, stretching, the gun tucked into the back of her shorts. Bellamy was sure that he saw people, eyeing the gun and then the couple before moving swiftly on. But no one was stopping her, so he let her stretch and gestured with his head that he was going to pay. She followed him in, if only to dump a bag of Doritos on the counter, alongside two energy drinks.

Bellamy found it hilarious that she expected him to pay, and the look he gave her must have said as much. But she tapped on his lower back, in the same place where the gun was hiding on her own body and he sighed, locking his jaw. He really wasn’t liking this girl. He paid and she picked up her food and cans, heading out of the shop in front of him.

When they were back in the truck, she opened both energy drinks at once, sticking them in the cup holder. The front seat was the only one in the truck, and therefore stretched out as a sort of bench. She opened the Doritos and placed them in between the two. Bellamy glanced at her and she held his gaze for a moment. He reached into the Doritos bag and pulled one out, popping it into his mouth. She didn’t make a move other than to eat one herself.

At least she was sharing, he thought dryly. Just a possible killer with a gun, but at least she’s sharing the food.

They drove until it got dark, and Bellamy kept going until he found somewhere to stop for the night. He parked, sitting in the darkness for a moment while the girl scrunched up the packet and took the two now-empty cans.

“I sleep in the back of the truck,” he told her. She nodded.

“Cool.” She pulled the gun out again and Bellamy flinched a little. But the safety was on and all she did was stuff it into the back of her shorts and wait for him to leave first. She was clever, he realised, jumping out from the truck and sticking the keys in his pocket. She wasn’t going to get out first, and possibly lose her ride, in the same way Bellamy wasn’t going to leave her in there alone with the keys.

She threw away the rubbish and met him at the bed of the truck as he lowered the back of it. They clambered in and he closed the back again. He rifled around his duffle bag and pulled out the sleeping bag he’d been using, sending only a glance to the girl with the gun. She took the sleeping bag from him, unzipping it all the way down, and lying back in the bed of the truck.

Hesitantly, he lied back with her. She had a gun, he told himself. She could kill him. She draped the sleeping back over the top of the two of them, like a blanket. And shut her eyes. He shut his but didn’t go to sleep. She didn’t move though. She didn’t shift and reach for his keys, or pull out her gun. She just stayed there, on her back, next to him. Eventually, he spoke.

“What’s your name?” He asked. She wasn’t breathing as if she was asleep, and his theory was proven correct by her response.

“You don’t need to know.”

“Then what do I call you?” She stayed silent for a little while – so long that Bellamy thought she’d gone back to sleep. But then she spoke again.

“Griffin.”

“Like the mythical beast?”

“Yeah.” Bellamy swallowed. Lion and eagle, the legend stated. Well she was ferocious enough to be one. “What’s your name?” She asked.

“You don’t need to know,” he smirked, repeating her answer. He glanced over, to see her smirking in a similar fashion. She didn’t look back at him, though.

“I’ll make up a name if you don’t give me one,” she told him. Bellamy just sighed, and thought of the gun tucked into her shorts. She was probably going to shoot him in the night, anyway.

“Bellamy,” he told her. She took a moment to respond.

“Did you make that name up?” She asked hesitantly.

“What? No!” He replied, annoyance ringing throughout his tone. She shrugged, next to him.

“Sorry. Sounded made up. That’s your actual name?” He nodded.

“Yeah.”

“Some parents you must have,” she replied. Bellamy didn’t reply. Some parents, he thought dryly.

At some point during the night, Bellamy’s eyes shut against their will. His guard was down, and if Griffin wanted to kill him, that was her chance. But, when morning came, light seeped through his eyelids, and he blinked blearily into the sun. Bellamy sat up, and Griffin was gone.

He turned around, looking out for her, but unable to see her figure – short, he’d realised yesterday. He packed up his sleeping bag with a shrug, checking and finding his keys still very much in his pocket, and returned to the front of the truck. He unlocked it, slipping inside.

Then he stuck his keys into the ignition as the passenger side door flew open. Griffin stepped into the car, placing the two coffees into the cup holders and a small paper bag in the middle of the seat. He looked at her with raised eyebrows before she shrugged.

“Breakfast,” was all she said. Then they were on the road.

As Bellamy drove, he noticed that Griffin had tended to her wounds. The blood that smeared her skin was washed away, and she was left with angry looking cuts and deep bruises. He tried not to look at her though. Any time he did, she’d shift the gun in her hand and they’d move on.

Half way through the day, and barely a word passed between them (Bellamy was slowly bristling with anger over the fact that she had a gun, and was using it to get him to transport her), Bellamy swore. Griffin’s head snapped over to him as he sighed, looking at the fuel gage that was nearing on empty.

They made it to the nearest petrol station, though, and sat in the car for a minute beside the pumps.

“What’s the problem?” Griffin asked, a little too firmly. Bellamy turned to her, a raised eyebrow and a scoff.

“I’m out of fuel and money, Princess,” he replied. She raised her eyebrows, and he felt like she was the wrong person to be short with. Someone without a gun would be more preferred. They sat at a stalemate for a moment, eyeing each other with hard glares. Then she moved, shifted down and picking up her backpack.

“Put fifty quid’s worth in the tank,” she told him. “I’ll pay.” Then she shrugged out of the car. He would have driven off at that moment, if he had the fuel, but took the key out and moved down beside the car anyway. Griffin waited in the shop, browsing through the aisles of food. He put in the fuel, and she waited for him to get there. He told her the pump number and she nodded, walking over to the cashier with purpose.

In many petrol stations, the cashier would have glass up between them and the customer. The glass wouldn’t have stopped the bullet anyway. Griffin pulled out the gun from the back of her shorts, pointing it at the man – no, teenager – behind the counter.

“Out here,” she demanded, gesturing for him to move over. Bellamy stood back, watching in horror. The quivering cashier held his arms up in surrender and followed her orders; down on his knees, hands behind his head etc. etc.

He begged for mercy, and Griffin shrugged her back onto her shoulders again, glancing between the staff member and her ride. Bellamy watched in fear. She sent a bullet through the guy’s brain.

Murderer, his brain screamed. But he shouldn’t have been surprised. Words passed between them, on his side quiet and scared, and on hers fierce and determined. He followed her out when she gestured to and he did what he was told.

She wasn’t just a girl with a gun anymore. She was a killer. Bellamy was starting to think that she had been all along.

\--

At first Bellamy was pissed. He was being held up with a cold-blooded killer and had just left the petrol station without paying, apart from the bullet that Griffin had so nicely handed over. Bellamy wasn’t a criminal. The only reason he could be considered one, before this event, was because of that assault charge he’d been landed with, only five days beforehand.

But, by the time they stopped that night, his anger had subsided. There was a story behind this girl. He really wanted to figure it out.

“Griffin,” he started, unrolling the sleeping bag like they had the night before. She looked up from glancing in the compact mirror she kept in her backpack. She was trying to wipe away the blood. Funny, he thought, he’d only known her for two days, but both days she was covered in red.

“Yeah?” She asked.

“Where did you get a gun?” Her lip curled up at the edges.

“You’re asking the right questions now, huh?” She replied, looking back to the mirror. He watched her, unzipping the bag without looking at it.

“It was my dad’s,” was all she said. Her lip had uncurled and she was now blankly looking into the compact, as if she were lost in a memory. Then she blinked and the moment was over. She took the sleeping bag from Bellamy’s hands and stuffed the compact away. She was asleep within minutes.

In those moments, Bellamy considered taking the gun and shooting her, or picking her up and depositing her on the ground before driving away. But he didn’t have the heart to kill her, and she would have woken up if she were moved. So he lay there silently, listening to her breathing until he slept, himself.

-

The next week passed in the same fashion. Bellamy stopped counting the days since he last saw Octavia, and started counting them from when he met Griffin.

Each morning Griffin would be gone when he woke up, but in the car by the time he drove away. She would pull out the gun only when she didn’t like the route he was taking with the conversation, or when they didn’t have enough money to pay for something. On the fifth day of knowing her, he asked her not to kill the cashier at the petrol station they were at. She shook her head.

“It’s a witness,” she told him, finger on the trigger. He turned away after that.

She lied easily, and avoided questions about her personal life. Bellamy didn’t care though. He figured that he was either going to die by her hand, or be locked up because of it, so he told her whatever she wanted to know. He spoke when he wanted something to fill the silence. He told her about Octavia, and he glanced at her once when speaking and saw a fond smile on her face. It disappeared shortly afterwards.

It was after nine days of knowing her that something shifted.

He didn’t trust her – not by a long shot – so he never left her in the truck alone. She had gone to the toilet at the road-side stop, and he was in the shop, buying food with some of the money she’d stolen from a till, only a few days before. It felt dirty, using the money, but it was all they had.

He glanced at the boards as he went past, before spotting her face. He stopped after that.

Bellamy stared at the notice board; a sheet of white paper with the name ‘Clarke Griffin’ underneath the word ‘MISSING’. He skimmed the details – she had disappeared after crashing her father’s car on the motorway. He pulled the piece of paper down from the board, staring at it a little longer before paying for his food at leaving.

He noticed the blatant disregard for any criminal activities on her part.

On the way back to the truck, Bellamy folded up the paper and stuffed it in his pocket, deciding that telling her immediately wouldn’t be the greatest of ideas. It took ten minutes of driving for him to figure out what he wanted to say.

“How did you get the injuries?” He asked. Bellamy had avoided the topic for the longest time, assuming it was in a fight, or something regarding the gun she toted at all times. Her head snapped around to his, though. He knew the answer – but she didn’t know that.

“I got in a fight,” she answered after a pause. Bellamy glanced at her, obvious disbelief on his face. She looked away.

“I don’t believe you,” he told her. She shrugged.

“You don’t need to.”

“No, because we’re not friends,” he replied. She stiffened slightly.

“Exactly.”

“You’re just a girl with a gun, making me drive you across the country, even though you never specified a destination.” Clarke – because he knew her name was Clarke now – was quiet for a little while.

“Exactly,” he heard her say, under her breath. They stayed silent for some time longer, before Bellamy turned on the music and AC/DC filled up the truck. They kept driving. He thought about the paper in his back pocket.

“I’m considering driving to Ark next,” he told her. She stiffened again.

“No,” she replied. He raised an eyebrow.

“No? You don’t tell me what to do.” She pulled the gun back out.

“Yes, I do,” she replied. “We’re not going to Ark.”

“Give me a reason,” he said, baiting her.

“Because if we go there, I’ll shoot you in the head.” Bellamy pursed his lips, as if he were in thought, leaning back in his seat.

“Not a good enough reason, Princess.” She glared across the seats at him.

“We are not going to Ark,” she repeated, her voice a deadly low. He shrugged.

“I want to, though. My sister’s boyfriend comes from Ark – he said it’s nice this time of year.” Bellamy inwardly sighed at the traffic that was mounting ahead of him, and pulled to a slow stop in the queue. Then he turned to the girl, gripping her gun until the knuckles on her right hand turned white. “You know, he also told me about this one rich family.” He shifted in his seat, pulling the paper from his pocket. “Rich enough to charge a ten thousand pound reward for their missing daughter.”

Bellamy slammed down the paper on the seat between them, and Clarke stared in shock at it. She had to have known this time was coming, right? But then her eyes stopped skimming the words and turned back to him, shooting daggers that could pierce his skin.

“We are not going back to Ark,” she told him once again. “I mean it - I will shoot your brains out.”

“I don’t doubt it, Princess.” Bellamy inched forward in the traffic. “But, now I know your name, you better tell me your story.”

“And why’s that?” She asked, raising an eyebrow. Bellamy shrugged, nodding towards the front of the queue.

“Because I can see the cop cars from here, and they’ll sure as hell hear the gunshot.” Clarke’s eyes darted from him to the road and she sighed angrily, slumping back in her seat and shoving the gun in her hand into her backpack. She screwed up the paper that sat between them, dumping it in the bag, too.

“Don’t think you’re getting the extended version,” she warned him. Bellamy shrugged. “My dad died a month back and my mother is intolerable. I stole his car. I crashed it, too. I stole his gun, and decided that the easiest way to disappear would be to jump in a stranger’s car.” Bellamy raised an eyebrow at her. “I’m not going back.”

“I’m not making you,” he replied. “But I’m returning to Ground at some point. I have to.” She nodded.

“I’ll find another ride,” she told him. They sat in silence as the queue slowly moved forward. There had been another collision on the road, but it seemed like the injured were in ambulances, not hijacking someone else’s cars this time. After they passed the police and kept moving, Bellamy glanced over to her.

“If you wanted to keep a low profile and not be found,” he said quietly. “I would stop with the killing and robbing.” Clarke shrugged.

“Maybe,” is all she said. He knew in that moment, as much as he knew in the nine days beforehand, that Clarke Griffin was going to be the death of him.

\--

It only took another day and a half for Clarke to lighten up a little, before falling back into her seriousness. She was starting to like the music he played in the truck, and sang along to the songs. He smiled a little as he watched her, momentarily not a girl with a gun but a girl in a truck, singing to AC/DC. Objectively, she was cute. The murder-thing made it a little difficult to feel that way. (Objectively, she was gorgeous, but that was even worse.)

She fell back into her silence when Bellamy went to pay for the petrol again and buy some snacks, and he found a new wanted poster in her name. This time, issued as a murderer. He ripped that one down to, and spent no time in handing it to her as they sat in the car by the pumps.

The road was empty that day, and Clarke didn’t help with the silence. The reached a small town, and Bellamy ducked into a store for her, taking a box of brown hair dye from the shelves and a pair of scissors. She insisted they sleep in a motel that night – almost two weeks of being in the truck was hurting her back.

Bellamy agreed, barely a thought spared for the gun.

He held the scissors by her neck and she shivered at the touch of the metal on her skin. Bellamy watched her in the mirror in the bathroom, for once looking small and afraid, not cold and heartless. He chopped her long hair off, up to her shoulders, and helped her with the hair dye. She looked so different as a brunette, which was good, he guessed.

“No more killing,” he told her, barely a glance spared as they climbed into bed. He wasn’t springing for two beds or two separate rooms so he dealt quietly with sleeping in the same bed as a murderer.

“No more killing,” she replied with a nod.

Bellamy knew as Clarke slept, that there were very few ways this would pan out. One of them was going to end up dead, but Bellamy had his money on both. A murder-suicide seemed like the way she would take it.

In the car, Bellamy slowly made an arch across the country, until he was heading back towards Ground. Clarke didn’t notice. She never had any clue where they were, but he made sure to drive quickly past signs that said Ark was only two hours in one direction, and take any turn off that wouldn’t lead them there.

He didn’t want to risk it.

After two weeks together, Clarke started buying cigarettes at the petrol stations, and she produced a lighter from her bag, and sat in the bed of the truck as he drove, smoking them all, one after the other. She’d do the same thing whenever they stopped for the night, and it only took a day of it for him to question her.

“Why are you chain smoking?” He asked, rifling around his duffel bag for a cleaner t-shirt. She shrugged.

“I’m going to die eventually,” she replied. “Why not by this?” Bellamy raised an eyebrow.

“When are you going to die?” She just shrugged again. They slept in the bed of the truck that night, and Clarke smelled like fags as she turned in her sleep, cushioning her head on his shoulder. He never told her that she did it a lot – that she wrapped her arms around him in his sleep, or that he wasn’t opposed to the body heat. He suspected she knew though – she always woke up first.

But that night, she wasn’t asleep. She consciously chose to move closer to him, resting her cheek on his shoulder.

“I think I might die at the end of the month,” she told him, eyes shut. Bellamy stiffened a little bit.

“Why’s that?” Clarke doesn’t reply for a while. The only noise is that of the far off cars. It had been a while, and Bellamy was sure that Clarke had gone to sleep. He wasn’t proven correct, and stayed silent after she spoke again. There was nothing he could say.

“Because I still have a few bullets left over.”

\--

Clarke was troubled and Bellamy knew it. He never got the extended version of her life story, and he knew she would never attempt to say it anyway. But her father was dead, and she made an offhand comment about her watch being his. She mentioned her mother was a doctor when she cleaned out the wound on his hand, when he sliced his hand with his pocket knife. She mentioned a cheating ex-boyfriend bitterly, and a girl who took her heart and crushed it while laughing.

When he asked what her middle name was, she almost laughed. She told him to guess, and he did, for hours. But he was never right. She promised him, though, that she would tell him before they died.

Bellamy didn’t like that she said ‘they’, but he didn’t argue.

He stored away the things he knew about Clarke Griffin. She had a gun. She was a killer. If she wasn’t a killer, Octavia would like her.

She was an excellent driver, apparently. And the crash was on purpose.

“No one else was hurt,” she told him with a shrug. It was true. He’d seen it on the news in a diner they stopped at. The girl who crashed the car had gone missing and then on a killing spree.

Bellamy was on the news, too. They didn’t know if he was an accomplice or a hostage. One night, he stood in a diner, watching the news with wide eyes. Octavia stood, crying, her boyfriend’s arms wrapped around her. He didn’t have the bruise on his face anymore – that had faded. Bellamy’s knuckles had turned back to their regular colour, too.

Clarke joined his side as Octavia insisted that Bellamy would never do such a thing as kill someone. That they were so close she sometimes believed she could read his thoughts – that she’d never heard of Clarke Griffin before. Some news channels hated Bellamy; thinking he was a killer, too. Clarke’s mother thought they were dating; that he had run away with her precious daughter and turned her to a life of crime.

But the cameras showed it was Clarke with the trigger and a steely gaze, and that Bellamy had only had one infraction with the police – the assault charge from a few weeks previous. When his sister was asked why he was so far from home, she started crying more, and Bellamy gritted his teeth watching.

“I told him to go,” she said to the camera. “I didn’t want to be around him, and told him to leave town for a while and get some fresh air and take some time out. I’m the one who made him leave.” Octavia hadn’t cried since she was thirteen and their mother was shot in front of them both. She hadn’t cried since the funeral where the priest sent her to rest with bible verses as Octavia screamed that she didn’t believe in God. And now she was crying on national television, over her brother.

Bellamy hated the life Octavia had been landed with. He gripped the counter first before pushing away, and Clarke followed him out to the car, where they drove in silence for hours.

-

Almost three weeks had gone by and Clarke hadn’t killed another person. They were running low on funds, and Bellamy didn’t know what to do. They sat in the truck in the morning, and Clarke waited for him to turn on the ignition, but he didn’t.

“I want to go home,” he told her. She glared.

“I don’t.”

“You said you would find another ride.” She shrugged.

“I don’t have enough bullets to persuade another person.”

“Then you don’t have enough bullets to persuade me.” She shook her head, looking at him.

“I do. I have four bullets left. That’s enough for you, your sister and her boyfriend, and then myself.” Bellamy stiffened, his hands tight on the wheel as he glared. “I won’t though,” she added. “I don’t want to kill you.”

“Then get out of my car,” he forced through his teeth.

“No,” she replied. “We’re going to keep driving, and we’re not going to stop until I’m ready.” He turned to look at her, fire burning in his eyes, and he found the same look mirrored in hers.

“I’m not driving you anywhere!” His voice was starting to rise with his hatred, and he was getting angrier by the second. This woman was going to kill him – no matter what. And he hated everything about her in that moment. All of the seconds of softness where she dabbed gently at his cut, or smiled with her eyes – they were all gone. The glances he sent her when she wasn’t focusing; his eyes trailing down her figure, or across her features – he pushed them all away. This woman was a killer.

“You’re going to drive,” she told him, low and angry. “If you don’t, I will shoot you.”

“I thought you didn’t want to kill me,” he retorted.

“I don’t. But I will.”

They argued a lot that day, and he yelled at her in the moments between songs and she replied just as frantically, waving the gun in the air. At one point, he considered taking it and shooting her – but that wasn’t him. He couldn’t do something like that.

So he kept driving and ignoring the pain in his throat and head. He pretended they were a couple, and they were in love and on a road trip together. It didn’t help, but it made it easier when she looked at him that night, lying next to him in the bed of the truck and said she was sorry. It made it easier when she rolled her body onto his, positioned her legs either side of his waist and kissed him.

She moved away first, giving him time to say no, or to push her off. But he just sighed, taking his hand and pulling her down to kiss him back. He needed to fuck someone, he decided. And she was around.

“I won’t hurt you if you don’t want this,” she told him, pulling off her t-shirt. There was still anger in her eyes, but the rest was completely sincere.

“I know,” he replied, sitting up. He captured her mouth with his again and she leaned back into it. “I know,” he repeated between kisses. They fucked in the back of the truck, not caring that they could hear voices of other people in the dark. It was quick and rough and everything he would expect it to be coming from Clarke; all teeth and hunger. They laid under the sleeping bag blanket that night completely naked, and he could look over her and see the gun. But she wasn’t holding it for once.

The two of them having sex changed the relationship a little. He felt less like a hostage after that. Clarke rarely showed him the gun, and it stayed in her backpack most of the time. She laughed sometimes and sung along to his music. They argued still when she figured out how close to Ark they were, but he promised they weren’t going there.

It was strange for him to realise that he meant it.

He and Clarke had sex a few more times in the next week; always hot and heavy in the bed of the truck; quick and not caring what happened. They didn’t have condoms and Clarke said she didn’t care if he came inside her. She said she was on the implant. He didn’t know if she was telling the truth or not, but he doubted he would live long enough to find out.

It had been over a month when he saw another news report.

Apparently Octavia had started up a bit of a campaign to get him home, and he watched from a stool in a bar as she appeared on the TV, saying how important he was to her, and how he didn’t have a bone in his body where he would condone killing and robbing. Clarke came back from the toilets as Octavia relayed their childhood – it sounded as if she’d done it a thousand times.

“Our mother died when I was thirteen,” she was saying, and Clarke looked up at the screen, recognising the girl. “Bell was eighteen and got custody of me. I was a hell child and he raised me anyway. He’s not a criminal, he’s probably a hostage and just as scared as we all would be.” Clarke looked at him, drinking down the end of her vodka tonic. Bellamy finished his whiskey.

“You’re not a hostage,” she told him, before standing and walking out of the bar. He sat there for a few more moments before following her out. She was already leaning on the truck, waiting for him to unlock it.

“What do you mean?” He asked, slipping into the car. She shrugged, slamming her door shut.

“I don’t want you to be a hostage,” she replied.

“You’re keeping me here with your gun though,” he argued. “That’s a hostage.” Clarke shrugged with a sigh, leaning back in her seat.

“I am, aren’t I?” He nodded, as if this was obvious. “Fine.” They stayed silent, and that night they didn’t fuck, but lay there, with a gap between them. She didn’t speak until the next day, when they were soaring back down the motorway. They were a couple of hours from Ground, and Bellamy sorely wanted to be back with his sister. It felt like she’d forgiven him and he wanted to be home.

It scared him that a small part of him wanted Clarke with him.

But she was a killer. A cold-blooded murderer who was holding him at gunpoint. She robbed people and left them in a pool of their blood. She wasn’t someone to bring home. She was someone to fuck in his car and hope she didn’t murder him.

She was silent, thinking, considering. That scared him, too. Because she got like that when he pissed her off, and he knew she was thinking over the gun. She made him pull into a road-side café. He rolled his eyes because they had only stopped a few hours before, but he did what he was told.

She had a gun.

There were a few cars parked there – a couple of families in the windows, and Clarke was shrugging on her backpack and heading into the café before he’d taken the key out. He jogged after her.

She didn’t order and so he told the waitress they needed a few more minutes. Clarke stared out the window for a while.

“I’m sorry,” she said, looking at him. And he opened his mouth to say something, but she was pulling out the gun. There was a gunshot. A loud noise. A pain. His shoulder, and she was standing above him. “This is for the best.”

She held the gun up, pointing at the other families. Then she took the keys he’d placed on the table that sat between them. Clarke was gone.

\--

Bellamy didn’t wake up for another day.

When he did he was in hospital with the soft beeping of life support on his left, and the less-soft snoring of Lincoln on his right. His sister’s boyfriend was stretched across two chairs, asleep, and Bellamy could see that his bruise had gone, just like it had healed on his knuckles. He smiled a little.

Bellamy tried to sit up, but winced.

“Fuck,” he hissed. Lincoln was up in a second, at his side, both relieved and annoyed all at once. His phone was out first, his fingers tapping rapidly at the screen. Only then did he call for a nurse.

The nurse turned up the morphine and Bellamy smiled a little, sinking into his pillow.

“What happened?” He asked.

“You were shot,” Lincoln replied. Bellamy raised his eyebrows at the man.

“I was?” He nodded.

“Clarke Griffin – the woman holding you hostage? She shot you.”

“Oh.” And that’s all they said until the doctor came in and changed his bandages, and then Octavia came in, flinging her body onto his and pulling back when he swore over the pain. She cried, and he told her he’d seen her on TV.

“You did?” She smiled. He nodded.

“The other night, actually. Then Clarke told me I wasn’t a hostage, and went silent until she shot me.” Bellamy wasn’t thinking straight but he saw his sister look at him quizzically. They chalked it up to the painkillers before Bellamy went back to sleep. And when he woke up, it was just Octavia in the room.

“You know I’m sorry, right?” He asked when she looked up. She nodded.

“I am, too,” she replied.

“It’s not your fault.”

“It is. If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t have been kidnapped like that.”

“She let me drive.” Octavia raised her eyebrows.

“She let you drive?” Bellamy nodded. “Why didn’t you drive to a police station?” He shrugged.

“She still had a gun.”

“What did she make you do?” Bellamy thought about it for a second.

“Nothing, really. I just drove, and watched her shoot.” His sister eyed him for a second before Lincoln returned with crappy hospital coffee for her, and changed the subject.

The next time he woke up, he was alone.

The room was silent besides the beeping of the life support, and there was a dull ache in his left shoulder. In a pot on the table next to the bed was a bullet, and he knew it had been in his body not long before. A nurse walked in – someone different than before. She had short brown hair, tied up in a ponytail, and it took a moment for him to recognise her.

He shuffled back, wincing in pain as his eyes widened. She held a finger to her lips.

“I’m sorry,” she said again. Clarke was dressed in scrubs, like the other nurses, and she had a name badge with another brunette on her person. The woman on the badge was called Roma, though, and she certainly didn’t look like her. “I had to do it.”

“Why?” He asked angrily, sitting forward and wincing, before falling back again. She stood next to his morphine, slowly turning it up and making him become drowsy.

“Because now you’re unaffiliated,” she whispered. “You would’ve been arrested, too. Now they’re sure you’re a victim.”

“Was I a victim?” His voice was slurring and his vision fuzzy.

“You were,” she agreed. “But I stopped seeing you as one, and forgot to let you in on that.” He tried to smile at the lightness in his tone, but he couldn’t focus on the right muscles. He felt her press a kiss to his lips, and tried to return it. But his eyes were already fluttering shut, and she was gone before he knew it.

\--

A week passed and he returned home.

His truck was still with Clarke, and the insurance company said they’d get him a new one. His bed seemed so strange to sleep in, after a month away, and it felt strange not to be moving. He watched the news, still.

He never used to, before. But now Bellamy was constantly looking out for her name. He found a few clips on the internet, where the shooting was brought up, unassociating him with the criminal activity. He was thankful, but at the same time he was still angry.

Bellamy wasn’t sure if she actually visited him in the hospital, or if it was a dream. But he didn’t tell anyone all the same.

He stayed silent, watching until her name popped up every night. Then turning off the TV, trying to sleep in his bed, but resulting to the floor, and doing the same thing the next day. He didn’t tell Octavia he was doing this, but she seemed to get it. And he ignored the lawyers and the policemen, and he told them he wouldn’t press charges.

No one understood why and he always shrugged. He didn’t want to say that she was going to die anyway, so it wouldn’t matter.

Bellamy hated that she was proven correct.

Within a few weeks of returning home, he was sure he saw his old truck around town, whenever he was dragged out of the house. But it was always gone soon after, and he never caught sight of the number plate. Eventually, though, he saw it right in front of him.

He stood by the window, looking wide-eyed at his duffel bag, now in the front seat. He tried the door but it was locked, and Octavia stood beside him, gawking.

“She’s here, then,” his sister said. He nodded, turning around and searching for her in the crowd. It didn’t take long. The gunshots and people ducking made it easier to see the girl, once again blonde, in the middle of the square, shorts and piercing blue eyes.

She waited, aiming the gun at anyone who moved but not shooting. Bellamy figured he heard two gunshots. It meant she still had one left and he knew who it was for.

Clarke waited until the police arrived, and when they did, she looked Bellamy directly in the eye. She stuck her hand in her pocket and the policemen placed their fingers on their triggers. The mothers covered the eyes of their children, and Clarke pulled out a jingling set of golden keys. She held them up for everyone to see, before throwing them in Bellamy’s direction.

He eyed her carefully before standing from his position by the truck. Octavia clutched his hand, trying to pull him back down.

“Bell!” She hissed. He shook her off, ignoring the policemen that he shouldn’t move. He took the keys from the ground, before looking at her.

“One of us was always going to die,” Clarke said loudly, but only to him.

“I thought it would be me,” he replied.

“I know. That was the idea.” Clarke lifted the gun slowly, from her position of pointing it at a civilian to her head. The police yelled some more, and Bellamy stared, eyes pleading. She tried a smile. “I told you I’d die at the end of the month.”

He tried to tell her not to, but she had the same steady look in her eyes that she had when she killed the first cashier, and the second, and the third. There was no way to ask her to stop. He wanted to beg for mercy, but she would give it to him in killing herself quickly. He knew that.

She was going to be with her father, and he knew she would want that. She crashed his car, and stole his gun. She ran from her mother because there was nothing she wanted more than to be with her father again. She wore his watch, and got angry when Bellamy fiddled with the clasp of it, to take it off when they were having sex.

“Amelia,” she said, smiling sadly, and Bellamy furrowed his brow. She nodded, waiting for him to get it, but not long enough. Because before he understood, he winced, turning his head, the gunshot deafening. Blood splattered the pavement in front of him, and the body falling to the floor was sickening. But Bellamy couldn’t move his eyes away from her face. For the first time, she looked at peace.

Bellamy understood.

Clarke Amelia Griffin was dead.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Rose was distressed when she read this. I think I upset her by not making her OTP get together. I upset myself too.
> 
> TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK!  
> I love getting your comments, so tell me stuff and hit the kudos button. Thank you so much for reading!


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